Author: Garden Summerland

I waited a long time before I moved his body. It had been at least an hour. Within the first ten minutes I’d stopped bleeding and my wound had begun to close. I traced my fingers along my neck and remembered how good it felt to be on the receiving end again. It had been eons since I’d had that pleasure. A dark alley in the early 18th century; there had been two of them. And I’d never been paid. Unless the token of immortality had been my wage. I remembered them fondly. One light and one dark, shredding my clothes and then my skin. It was a beautiful savagery that I would never experience again. Until tonight.

It was after midnight, and the street below was quiet. I sat on the living room floor of the darkened apartment, the light from the bedroom down the hall barely illuminating the scene. There was a growing puddle of blood on the floor and crimson streaks down the wall. And it was on his mouth. Flashbacks in my head… his mouth on my neck, the exquisite pain and then the ecstasy. I’d forced him to feed. He hadn’t wanted it. At least not at first. He had fought me, and then he’d lost control.

Frenzied tearing into my throat until I threw him across the room. His head smashed against the wall cracking his skull open; splattering blood across the pink floral wallpaper. He hit the floor with a sick thud and I sat there, shocked at my own brutality. I’d never done that.

He bled out in front of me and I did nothing to stop it. I could have healed him; stopped his transformation. Something.

But the truth…I was overjoyed; his humanity had drained; and it wouldn’t be long now.

My feelings had over-ruled my better judgment. I loved him and I wanted him to be one of us… like me.

Forever.

I’d asked, and he’d said no. But I’d made him do it anyway. And he’d loved it, just like I knew he would.

Would he hate me when he resurrected? Would he finish ripping into my throat? Or would he take me as the humans did to each other? Stripping my clothes away to press his bare body against mine, and inside of mine, trying to become me, to own me. Was it really so different than what I had done?

I stared at his serene face. He looked dead; his face was pale, his eyes closed and darkness creeping in around the lids. I wanted to kiss him. I did not.

He was as perfect in mortal death as he had been in life. I stroked his wild blond hair and caressed the side of his face. He had immaculate features; chiseled cheekbones and a pouty bow mouth that was made for kissing. My eyes traveled over the rest of him; his onyx shirt unbuttoned revealing a smooth chest and a raven tattoo. Even lifeless, his hot body screamed out for my vampiric desires. Who could’ve resisted?

I’d fed on him numerous times and he was none the wiser. I’d hidden the memory from him; I was nothing more than the beautiful and mysterious woman that lived in the apartment across the hall. Occasionally we’d meet on the elevator or in the stairwell, and he’d look at me with a puzzled expression, waving sheepishly before he made himself turn away. I always returned his glances with an innocent smile, fighting the urge to lick my lips as I remembered his salty copperness. I craved him. And I’d broken my own rule by continuing to feed on him. Once and then move on. But he tasted so damn good, I couldn’t leave him. And then I’d really screwed up, I’d allowed it… that feeling.

Love; such a twisted emotion. It makes the body want things the mind knows it can’t have; that it shouldn’t have. And vampires don’t like being told ‘no’.

I continued waiting; impatiently for hours until he regained consciousness. Now he was fully awake in his new form. A vampire like me. I smiled at him.

It was immediately apparent he did not share in my elation. He was upon me in seconds, using his new found strength to pin me against the wall. My joy had made me weak.

He didn’t know he couldn’t physically hurt me, but he sure gave it his best shot.

He was tireless, and the night dragged on with him wailing away upon my body, until finally his anger wore him down.

He would never know how to truly hurt me… the one action he could take that would break me. I would never let it happen. I would revel in his anger and his hatred, the knowledge that he felt something for me.